As Whitman said so eloquently, "I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return." Thoughts, that is, about being a librarian.

Web/Tech

May 28, 2008

I'm pleasantly surprised by the turnout of librarians at the CIT conference. I arrived this morning and met my co-presenter, we talked about the conference and she said to me, "I didn't realize that this was a library conference!". It turns out she was discussing CIT with another faculty member who told her this conference was for librarians. Which surprised me of course, since I don't think the conference is specifically geared towards librarians, but rather to technology specialists and faculty using technology at SUNY campuses. It was flattering to think that some faculty view this as a library conference. Librarians just happen to be one of the main constituencies on campus who use technology heavily; presenting, talking, and using lots of the good stuff. In many cases, libraries were the first departments to use technology in higher education institutions. On my campus, librarians are the staff attending and presenting at technology conferences. In fact, there are two of us from my library presenting today; six of us are here in attendance from my library alone. The bloggers, twitter users, and presenters are librarians; participants are librarians; learners are librarians. I'm always impressed by the amount of training, workshop attendance and staff development which librarians undertake.There may be a flip side to this - the colleague didn't bother coming to this conference because it was a "library conference", but maybe this also means the faculty know that librarians are at the forefront of applying and using instructional technology on our campuses. Now, if only our computing & information technology department wasn't so territorial about instructional technology, we might be able to work together more productively to create some engaging and worthwhile faculty & staff training programs.